Sustainable Change for Students and Educators

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Sustainable Change for Students and Educators

• DECS Leadership Seminar
• July 10, 2008
• Ben Levin
• OISE/University of Toronto

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Ontario 2003

• 10 years of conflict
• Stagnant results
• Declining high school graduation
• Unhappy teachers
• Public dissatisfaction
• Flight to private schools

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Ontario 2007

• Peace and stability
• Improving results
• Higher graduation rates
• Improved teacher morale
• Increased public confidence
• Return to public schools

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Where is S A in This Picture?

• What is going well?
• What needs improvement?
• What are the trouble spots?

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The Importance of Improvement

• Education matters more than ever
• We have improved over many years
• We can do better stil
• How much? We dont know
• Arne Boldt

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How to Do This

• Strategy and Leadership
• Capacity-building and infrastructure
• Communications
• Focus and distractions
• Resources
• All about improving will and skill

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The Right Changes

• Change teaching/learning practices
• Using best evidence
• Student engagement
• Outreach to parents, community
• Build sector capacity and commitment
• Improved leadership skills
• Curriculum and assessment as servants, not masters

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Reaching Every Classroom

• Changing teaching practice in ways that have a
  significant impact on student outcomes is not
  easy. Policy and organisational contexts that
  continually shift priorities to the next big
  thing, with little understanding of current
  practice undermine the sustainability of
  changes already under way. Innovation needs to be
  carefully balanced with consolidation if
  professional learning experiences are to impact
  positively on student outcomes. (Timperley et
  al., 2007, p.225)

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Improving Teaching Practice

• Using what we know
• Teacher ownership
• Collective work
• Rooted in school settings
• Effective use of data

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Treating People Well

• Students
• Staff
• Parents

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Implementation

• Avoid too many separate projects
• Requires infrastructure
• Relevant to the size of the challenge
• Need to build capacity
• Research, evaluation and data

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Managing Distractions

• Public confidence and support are key
• Lots of dialogue and communication
• Respect for all parties, especially teachers
• Coherence and alignment in and across sectors

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Implications for You?
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Ontarios Strategy

• Primarily school-based
• 1.3 million students, 80,000 teachers
• 4000 elementary schools in 72 districts
• 4 systems French and English
• Self-governing districts within provincial policy
  framework
• Limited provincial testing regime

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Overall Strategy

• 2 big targets
• Elementary literacy/numeracy
• High school graduation rates
• Many smaller initiatives
• Important to have coherence
• Many of the were supportive

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Main Elements

• Public goals and targets
• Simple, clear and hard to oppose
• Build sector support
• Build sector capacity
• Policy as support rather than central
• Curriculum, assessment, etc
• Support well-grounded practices
• Minimize mandates
• Stay focused

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Implementation

• Literacy/Numeracy Secretariat
• Led by respected educators
• Student Success Leaders and Student Success
  Teachers in secondary
• Relentless reminders, events, supports
• From projects to universal practices
• Significant resources for this

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Managing Distractions

• Strong political leadership
• Guiding coalition
• Alignment with local leaders
• Building staff support
• Attention to publics views

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Implications for You?
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Thank You!
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